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Imam at Trump’s Prayer Service Recited a Condemnation of Jews and Christians

Sajid Tarar, Founder of American Muslims for Trump, delivers the benediction during the second day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Tuesday, July 19, 2016. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Honoring a tradition that dates back to America’s first president, George Washington, in New York (described here, The Daily Advertiser, April 23, 1789, p. 2), within 24 hours of his swearing-in, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence attended a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral.

The Saturday prayer service was a modern “interfaith event” which included (as described here, p.11, and seen in this video clip) a recitation by Sajid Tarar, an advisor at Medina Masjid of Baltimore.

He recited the Koran’s very brief first sura, or chapter: the so-called “Fatiha,” or “Opening,” consisting of seven short verses (verses 1-6; verse 7).

As I noted in a tweet shortly after viewing Saturday’s event, regarding verse 7:

This high-profile ecumenical event illustrates starkly the conundrum of mainstream Islamic practice within our free, multi-confessional, but overwhelmingly non-Muslim society. Pious Muslims repeat the Fatiha, including verse 7, up to 17 times per day during their five requisite prayer sessions, and the accompanying “subunits” of prayer (see pp.49-50). While verses 1-6 are confined to Muslims re-affirming their personal devotion to the Islamic creed, and its deity, Allah, verse 7 launches into open condemnation of other faiths — specifically Judaism and Christianity.

An authoritative modern Koranic translation by Drs. Muhammad al-Hilali and Muhammad Khan (p.12) of the Fatiha’s concluding verse 7 includes parenthetical references to the Jews (after the word “anger,” or in the translation distributed at the inaugural prayer service, p.11, “wrath”), and the Christians (after the word “astray”):

The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians).

The Hilali-Khan translation of Koran 1:7 provides a detailed justification of its references to the Jews as those who have engendered Allah’s anger, and the Christians as the ones who have gone astray. The specific references to Jews and Christians in the Hilali-Khan translation of the Fatiha’s final verse comports both with the canonical hadith (the sacred “traditions” of Muhammad and the early Muslim community) interpretation of these verses, and classical and modern Koranic commentary (“tafsir”) interpretations by the leading luminaries of this discipline in Islam — a consensus of thought stretching literally from the 7th through the late 20th centuries. Moreover, leading contemporary, mainstream scholars of Islam — both non-Muslim and Muslim linguistic and textual analysts — share this understanding of how Koran 1:7 is to be interpreted.

For over thirteen centuries, through our contemporary era, the consistent, collective understanding of Koran 1:7 — the Fatiha’s last verse — is that Jews and Christians are being insulted, even cursed (especially in the case of the Jews) eternally for their “spiritually aberrant” ways.

Accordingly, utterance of this verse must be expunged from all federal, state, and local government events, and in an even more egregious breach of ecumenical civility, our Navy Military Funerals sea burial ceremony, and all comparable funeral ceremonies, conducted within the other branches of the U.S. military.

Jerry Johnson, president of the National Religious Broadcasters and a member of the new Faith Leaders for America group, said he was not surprised that someone with Magid’s background was included in the National Prayer Service at the National Cathedral.

“It did not surprise me, because the wrong kind of Muslims and Muslim leaders have been gaining inroads into Christian circles, government circles, education and media circles for years,” Johnson told WND Monday. “And by the wrong kind I mean they’re sympathetic with Shariah, sympathetic with jihad and they’re not benign, not leaders who affirm the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights. So I’m not surprised that someone got into the prayer service who was a sort of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

…

Who invited Magid to pray?

Johnson said he believes the National Cathedral staff put the service together.

2 thoughts on “Imam at Trump’s Prayer Service Recited a Condemnation of Jews and Christians”

Last paragraph, “… the wrong kind of Muslims …” To be a Muslim, one must believe the Koran, and the Koran has many similar expressions of contempt for Jews and Christians, some calling for killing. Read chapters 8 and 9 and you will see the motivation with incentives providing spoils of property and slaves that began in the early part of the seventh century and continues to today.